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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Ebola Fears; Hong Kong Protests; Official: Airport Ebola Screening Not Foolproof; Secret Service Names Interim Chief; Interview with the Judge Handling Texas Ebola Response

Aired October 02, 2014 - 16:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Is it Ebola we have to fear or chronic incompetence?

I'm Jake Tapper. This is THE LEAD.

The national lead. More than 100 people, we're told, now at risk of possible Ebola exposure in the United States, as we hear from the woman who shared a bed with an Ebola patient in Dallas. Why did it take an interview with CNN for health officials the come and get those almost certainly contaminated sheets and towels?

The world lead. It looks like the coalition is winning from the air, but nine more people were reportedly just decapitated by ISIS on the ground -- more carnage as ISIS stays on the move.

Also in national news, it was the last straw for the now former Secret Service Director Julia Pierson, when a guy with a gun got on the same elevator as President Obama. So, why did the commander in chief only find out about that troubling event just minutes before you and I did?

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We're going to begin with the national lead.

A major public health concern and questions about how much the medical community is truly on the case as they race to contain Ebola in the United States after the first diagnosis on U.S. soil. Of course, how much of a race is it if the hospital in question initially sent home the patient, a Liberian national? And the hospital seemed oblivious to months of Ebola warnings? And how much of a race is it if public health officials did not send anyone to dispose of the sheets and towels he used at his apartment in Dallas where he lay sick for days?

They didn't send anyone until today after CNN began broadcasting his girlfriend's concerns that those sheets were still on her bed. Race? Is that the right word? Right now, health officials in Texas are working to identify every person who has been on contact with the first man ever diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, Thomas Duncan.

Authorities getting in touch with about 100 people who might have had direct contact with Duncan and monitoring a dozen of them, including five schoolkids from four different schools. And here's how some parents in Texas found out. (BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It has been confirmed that five students may have came in contact with an individual who is currently diagnosed with the Ebola virus.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

TAPPER: A robo-call. We're also finding out what it is like inside Duncan's homes behind the walls of a quarantine from his partner, who spoke to Anderson Cooper today and said they stayed in the same bed and those sweaty sheets are still there along with her and her child and her two nephews, and that none of them are sure exactly what to do, that the Centers for Disease Control has not given them much guidance.

And, by the way, they're hungry, surviving on the few sandwiches health officials brought over last night, according to her. Are we as a nation really prepared for this? Does it seem that way to you?

I want to bring in chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta from the CDC in Atlanta and senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen outside the Dallas hospital.

Sanjay, it sounds horrible in that home right now and they didn't even really know what to do with the sheets. Apparently, the CDC heard Anderson's reporting and then they got on the case?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

There was some movement certainly after those reports, and we were talking about it on the air and shortly thereafter the CDC they basically told us -- they said they are going to be sending over medical contractors to go help clean up the sheets and the towels and address other issues, as they put it.

I thought there was two interesting things about that. One thing is, the other issues, I'm not sure what they were talking about. Were they were talking about just generally communicating to this woman the things that she needed to be doing? Had those things already been communicated or not?

And also, they didn't say, oh, we had already tried to clean up these sheets or towels and explain why it hadn't already been done. They just said we're going to do it now. Look, there's been a few different fumbles here, Jake, no question, starting off with this particular gentleman, Mr. Duncan, being turned away from the hospital the first time, when we now know he was probably symptomatic at that time with the Ebola virus.

And now this other thing, where these potentially contaminated sheets and towels have remained in that apartment for some time. The Ebola virus can live outside the body. It can live on these surface, on those sheets and those towels.

It's unlikely to get infected from that, but why take the chance? That sort of consideration didn't seem to be taken here and it just didn't seem very humane when I heard Anderson's reporting on this in terms of what things are like in that apartment, just -- she couldn't even sleep in that particular room anymore.

TAPPER: And it's not as though there are thousands of cases for the CDC to be preoccupied with. There's this one.

Sanjay, companies that make hazmat suits are seeing their stocks rally on this Ebola scare. Yet these people are left with sheets used by an Ebola patient. How do you think it happened? Was there a communication breakdown? I guess I'm just -- I picture the CDC swooping in with a truck, with all sorts of equipment, ready on the case.

GUPTA: Well, I'm not sure any excuse I would give would be satisfactory, because, look, if it were me, if were my family, entirely unacceptable. Just there's nothing that you can say.

One thing they brought up in a press conference subsequently was that they couldn't find a lot of volunteer medical contractors to go in and do this sort of work. Apparently, they were turned away when they were asked about this before, contractors who would go actually clean up that apartment.

I guess that's not entirely surprising. But, again, Jake, to your point, I wonder why some of this wasn't sort of planned in advance. They have had months to sort of think about this sort of planning, who was going to be responsible for some of the medical waste cleanups associated with Ebola. So, you know, again, I'm not sure there's any kind of an excuse that will suffice here.

This it first time this has happened. There's a lot of learning pains that we're seeing real time, Jake.

TAPPER: We sure are.

Elizabeth, Liberian officials are now talking about prosecuting Duncan. They say that Duncan may have lied on his exit forms as he left the country. He obviously had had contact with a very sick Ebola patient, a pregnant woman who died. You left Liberia just a few days after this patient did. Tell us about the process you went through, what questions you were asked.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: All right, well, the process is extensive.

They take your temperature and all of that, but that of course wouldn't have made a difference with this patient since we're told he was feeling fine. You are handed a form. And the form asks you all sorts of things about symptoms, et cetera.

Here's the question I want to focus in on, Jake. Have you taken care of an Ebola patient or come into contact with the bodily fluids of an Ebola patient? From reporting by CNN and others, it appears that Duncan did do that. It's hard to believe he didn't realize that she had Ebola, because according to some reporting, he took her to a hospital so she could be admitted to the Ebola unit, and it was full, so she had to go home.

So, definitely lots of questions why he said no to that question.

TAPPER: And, Elizabeth, these possible 100 contacts that Duncan had in Dallas or in the United States, how are they tracking everyone down? How are they making the decision on whom should be monitored?

COHEN: Right.

What they do is, they call these 100 people and they say, hey, we want to know what kind of contact you might have had with this man. And contact is -- it's an interesting definition of contact. If you just walked by him and kind of waved and said hi, that's not considered contact.

If you shook his hand, that's considered contact. Certainly, if he were vomiting and you went to go help him, that would be considered contact. So some of these people are going to say, oh, I don't even know what you're talking about. I don't even know this guy. They are taken off the list. If someone says, oh, yes, I met him at a party and I shook his hand, that person would be considered a contact.

TAPPER: And, of course, we're relying on people to tell the truth and that, of course, is an X-factor in all of this.

Elizabeth Cohen and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Joining me on the phone right now is Judge Clay Jenkins. He's the man in charge of coordinating this response in Dallas, Texas, and director of homeland security and emergency preparedness.

Thank you for joining us, Judge. We appreciate it.

You said the quarantined citizens will be treated with dignity, but I guess there are some questions now about the family who are in the patient's apartment or his girlfriend's apartment. Not only does it not seem very dignified with those sheets and towels still there, with them not being instructed on what to do with them, but it also seems a little dangerous. What is your response?

JUDGE CLAY JENKINS, DALLAS COUNTY: Well, Dr. Thomas Frieden with the CDC and Dr. Lakey with the state and myself met yesterday and decided to move this to an ICS structure.

And I'm at top of that ICS structure. We stood up an incident command center at 8:30 this morning, but last night, we laid out our concerns. And several of my concern, I have heard on your show. I would like to see those people moved to better living conditions.

We wanted to make sure that as quickly as possible, we got the sheets and any waste out of the apartment, that the apartment was cleaned if they are staying there for any length of time.

Many of the things that you're talking about are things that our ICS team have worked on today. My chief of logistics is working on finding them more suitable living arrangements.

And I think there might have been some misinformation about sandwiches. Well, there were sandwiches delivered by some of our staff last night, but they have about a week's worth of groceries that were delivered to them today.

TAPPER: OK. Great.

JENKINS: Dignity for them is very important.

TAPPER: How soon will they be moved, sir? In the next day?

JENKINS: We are working on that. I would like to have moved them five minutes ago.

TAPPER: All right.

JENKINS: But we're working on that.

And the team that is place -- and we have still got the people that were working on this from day one, but our team that has come in to help with this is working very hard. And we're working well with those people, and we think the situation is going to improve.

TAPPER: In your news conference just minutes ago, you made a point to talk about your commitment to transparency. We all applaud that. Do you think that transparency has been lacking up until now?

JENKINS: Not so much lacking, but there's a lot of misinformation that is circulating through the community, fear in our schools, that if a child who was around Mr. Duncan and is asymptomatic ever went into that school that now your children shouldn't go there.

And so we're trying to dispel those rumors, because there's zero chance of contracting Ebola from an asymptomatic person who has been exposed to it. And we're getting new information all the time. And so I want to get that information out as best as I can in real time to the media, so that they can get that out to our citizens.

We are putting in place a joint communications network. And I have asked the city of Dallas, and I have had Mayor -- or Mayor Mike Rawlings has done I think you're show or some of your shows, and he's helping with getting the information out, because there's a lot of work that have to do here in the EOC.

Also, I have also got Mike Miles doing that and I have got their staff now embedded along with the CDC and the state's top doctors in our EOC here. That's where I'm calling you from now.

TAPPER: Right.

Judge, let me just ask you quickly, if you could. There have obviously been a couple big breaches in this. One, the patient going to the hospital and somehow there was a miscommunication. And even though he said he had just come from West Africa, he went back home. He was sent home with antibiotics. That's a big mistake. And, two,

obviously, the man's girlfriend in the apartment with these potentially contaminated sheets and towels. How do you make sure that these mistakes do not happen again in Texas?

JENKINS: That's something we will look at in what we call the hot wash from this.

I'm not a doctor or a hospital administrator. I'm not defending those two occurrences, but my focus is on the road in front of us making sure that we don't have more fumbles and just moving forward and protecting our citizens.

TAPPER: All right, well, god bless and good luck, Judge. I appreciate it. Thank you for joining us on the show, Judge Clay Jenkins.

JENKINS: Thank you.

TAPPER: We know there are a lot of questions out there about the Ebola virus. And CNN's medical team is here to help. Just use #EbolaQandA on social media, also the CNN.com/impact. And you can find out how you can help fight the Ebola epidemic and what you can do about it.

Coming up, they can't manage to sweep pretzel crumbs off the seat, and yet flight cleanup crews have been tasked with the job of keeping your plane safe from an Ebola contamination. So, is enough being done to protect travelers when flights are still being allowed from the West Africa hot zone?

And later, Hong Kong's leader ignores the demands of thousands of protesters to step down. Could his defiance set the stage for a violent showdown?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

Continuing our national lead -- we now know the flight path of a man diagnosed with Ebola who boarded three different planes before eventually arriving in Dallas. Thomas Eric Duncan's flight begun in Monrovia, Liberia, and from there, he flew to Brussels, Belgium. Next came a layover at Dulles Airport in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. From there, he boarded the plane that took him to his final destination, Dallas, Texas.

We've been told Duncan was not showing any symptoms of Ebola when he traveled, which means the virus was not contagious at the time.

But is that enough to reassure passengers who were onboard that Petri dish in the sky with Duncan or who flew on the same plane after him?

CNN aviation correspondent Rene Marsh is live from Dulles in Virginia.

Rene, what have you learned about Duncan's flights? RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, I have been

in touch with the airline United, the two domestic airlines, and they tell me today that two flights after all of this got a very thorough scrubbing. So, we do know that those planes are back in service, back in the air. But they assure us that they have been thoroughly cleaned.

This was Duncan's second stop as far as his trip here. We know he came, as you mentioned, from Liberia to Brussels and then he landed here for a three-hour layover. We spoke to lots of passengers passing through this airport today and they say the signs warning about Ebola, they are up.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARSH (voice-over): Passengers at Washington Dulles International Airport where Thomas Eric Duncan infected with Ebola first landed in the United States. All three planes he flew on are still in operation. U.S. customs officers are giving this flyer to passengers arriving from Ebola impacted countries. It warns of the symptoms and what to do if they develop them.

The officers are trained to identify passengers showing obvious signs of sickness. But if there are no signs, they will be able to enter the U.S. without being stopped.

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, INFECTIOUS DISEASE EXPERT: We will have patients -- people, they are not patients yet -- who come over from West Africa. They're healthy but then become ill while they are here and present to a hospital.

MARSH: Experts say that means there's a reasonable chance another Ebola patient will enter the U.S. No symptoms of Ebola indicates the person is not contagious but that could change over a long trip or be missed by a screening.

SCHAFFNER: The most important thing they are doing is asking a question about contact. That's important, but could be faked. But then they are also taking their temperatures.

MARSH: In 2012, CNN went behind the scenes on a United Airlines plane and saw a quick cleaning. During quick turnarounds, the priority is visible dirt.

STEPHANIE BUCHANAN, V.P., HOUSTON HUB, UNITED AIRLINES: We can have as little as 40 minutes and maybe as much as an hour and a half sometimes, but usually the lesser time. When the planes come in, everybody has to work as quickly as they can to get everything turned and ready for the flight to go out again.

MARSH: Longer layovers allow for different cleanings, which include disinfectants. There are also special international protocols for more hazardous cleanups, disinfecting after an event is also critical, as body fluids such as respiratory secretions, blood, vomit and feces may contain infectious agents that could be transmitted if not properly contained. The U.S. government has not told the airlines to stop flying to Ebola

impacted countries. And, United Airlines, which has a night to Nigeria, says they will continue to fly until the government says otherwise.

SCHAFFNER: I don't think people should be concerned about flying. In fact, I would hope that the airlines continue to fly to West Africa. Those countries' economies are fragile enough. We need business people going in. We need goods coming in.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARSH: Well, Brussels Airlines, which is the carrier which flew the Ebola patient from Liberia to Belgium, says that they will continue to fly. They say it's their humanitarian duty to bring medicine, supplies, and health care workers to the region -- Jake.

TAPPER: Rene Marsh at Dulles Airport -- thank you so much.

A new director takes over the embattled Secret Service. But with a list of security breaches piling up, will that be enough to keep public officials, including the Obama family, safe?

Also, what was the final straw that forced Julia Pierson to step down as director? A man who used to have the top job will talk to us about it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

In the national lead -- a new Secret Service director as at the helm for now, Joseph Clancy, who once headed President Obama's protective detail, has been named interim director. He replaces Julie Pierson who was on the job for just 18 months. Her tenure cut short after a series of major security lapses, including, of course, the intruder who made it to the East Room of the White House with a knife in his pocket.

But a source tells me the final straw came when Pierson and the agency did not tell anyone in the White House that a man with a gun had managed to get onto an elevator with the president three days before that jumper in Atlanta.

So, there may be a new director but the question still remains -- are the president and first family safe?

Joining me to discuss all of this is Ralph Bashan who headed the Secret Service himself along then-director, now former director Julia Pierson earlier this week.

Ralph, thanks so much for being here. Appreciate it.

RALPH BASHAM, FORMER SECRET SERVICE DIRECTOR: Thanks.

TAPPER: So, sources tell me that the final straw came with the elevator breach, the armed man who may have had a criminal record, I'm still not clear about that fact, getting on an elevator with President Obama.

And the source says there are three items that made this the final straw for Pierson. One, that it happened. Two, that this happened, and then there were two weeks of discussions with Secret Service about security because of the fence jumper and this never was brought up. And, three, it finally was brought up only right before the media went to -- was about to report it. And that was the final straw for President Obama and the White House.

Can you give us any insight as to what happened?

BASHAM: I am not personally aware of any discussions that went on between the director and President Obama.

TAPPER: There weren't any. That was the problem.

BASHAM: But about the fact was this the final straw? You know, obviously, the hearing was a feeding frenzy and I know that it was physically and emotionally draining on the director. And I know she was contemplating what her move should be here.

And once she determined that the focus of all of this was now turning towards her and her position, she recognized this was not good for the service and therefore, she realized she had to make the move.

TAPPER: All right. You're being very nice and charitable towards her. Let me just ask you this hypothetically.

BASHAM: Yes.

TAPPER: Can you imagine the circumstance in which this happens with you as director of the Secret Service and you don't tell the president about it?

BASHAM: Well, let me just say right upfront on that -- it wouldn't necessarily have been me to have told the president.

TAPPER: Or anyone?

BASHAM: Well, it would have been -- generally, in a case like that, special agent in charge that would have told, informed the -- when I was head of the vice president protective division and those kinds of incidents arose, I went myself. So, the director didn't necessarily go to --

TAPPER: Right, but no one told him about it.

BASHAM: No, no, that -- no, there is no excuse. I mean, obviously, there is no excuse for that. There's no excuse for -- as we talked before, about September 19th fence jumper and what needs to happen now, though, is to get off of this issue --

TAPPER: Right.

BASHAM: --in terms of the director and how do we now move forward to make sure that these kinds of incidents don't happen.

TAPPER: What is to happen?

BASHAM: Joe has a great opportunity here, or whomever becomes the department director.